Bates Motel: "The Immutable Truth" Review

You're the best mother in the world.

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May 5, 2014

Warning: full spoilers for the episode follow...

Mother wins, unfortunately that means that everyone else loses.

Ah, this is the Bates Motel I want. The focus is right where it needs to be: Norman Bates and his apple pie-baking and dangerously inappropriate mother. To some degree, the show has been toying with the notion that perhaps in this version of the tale Norman’s destiny could be averted. I don’t believe that series co-creators Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin ever really intended to have Norman turn a corner and become a solid citizen of the world. The illusion that redemption was possible for this boy so full of love and rage is part of what fueled Bates initially, though. It gave the show the tension-filled edge of a Greek Tragedy. We understand the changes that would need to happen in order for Norman to be saved, we can see all of the big and small choices that are leading him down his murky and murderous path, but we are powerless to stop fate from unfolding as it must, as we know it will.

Like the title says, the truth is immutable. It’s such a clever title for the episode, as it works on multiple levels. Any hope that viewers were holding onto that Norman hadn’t been the one to slay Blaire Watson was eradicated in last week’s “The Box”, as the crucible of being buried alive broke through his defenses and the reality of his inner darkness and outer violence came rushing to the surface of his mind. No, our sweet Norman, the boy with the dimpled smile and alluring depth of character, is the same person who will one day – someday soon, perhaps – don a wig and a skirt in order to stab women as they bathe. He’s the man who will stuff adults into ice makers and enjoy afternoon tea with the perfectly preserved remains of his poor, repressed, train wreck of a mother. That truth cannot be changed.

However, Norman’s interpretation of the truth, his understanding of it, well that’s an entirely mutable affair. First, as to his memory, that’s not the way I remember ginger bread tasting – laced with the tinge of blood and mercury. I know, the gingerbread was an analogy. It’s interesting, though, because you can see the two sides of his psyche even in the use of a sweet as a metaphor for how viscerally he was recalling ending a woman’s life. The methods Norma uses to work on Norman also crystalized in those sequences. She begins right when he wakes up, just as he’s emerging from the clouded depths of his fugue state she seeks to cram him right back into it.

“They’re just dreams, Norman,” she tells him. Her lies are the dreams, though, his brutal memories are what’s real. Then later, as if it’s she who’s the child and not he, Norma simply screams for Norman to stop talking when she doesn’t like what’s being said. She insists that he eat his home made pot-roast before it gets cold, even as Ms. Watson’s meat rots in her icy grave. It’s just so gorgeously twisted. I’ve talked previously about Norma’s ability to compartmentalize and repress. What’s so wonderful here is that the viewer can understand why she’s trying to force Norman to adopt her head-in-the-sand method of wading through life, even as we see the damage it’s doing to both her son and the world at large. She can’t help it, this has been her method of survival her whole life, and her assumption is that this is the way to see her son through.

This episode highlights the crux of the series. It’s not will Norman or won’t he – that’s inevitable. It’s the why of it all that keeps us engaged. Norma is a living, breathing, walking catastrophe and we just can’t help but to slow down and watch her in equal parts horror and fascination. Vera Farmiga and the writers have done a remarkable job of capturing the essence of a wounded adult from an abusive home. Norma has no sense of boundaries, as we saw in that amazingly creepy dream-lover dance sequence and kiss in the woods. She literally tells her son that they are the same person, because she cannot distinguish herself and her needs from his.

She uses her love as a reward and the absence of it as a weapon with Dylan. She does not hesitate to tell Norman that she tried to sleep with a man in order to make her new friend happy. She is highly emotional, erratic, volatile, pathologically narcissistic, addicted to deception, and childlike in her perceptions of the world. She tries to force her son to put the ugliness in his heart “out of his head” and in so doing, in her failure to address the problems of her life and his head on, she embeds him so deeply into a wounded psyche that he’ll never come out. She is so controlling that she forced her son to live, when he may have understood something she didn’t about what he was morphing into. She does love him though, she loves him entirely, and she knows of no other way to help him. So, did she create a monster?

Is Norman the killer he is because of Norma’s suffocating repression? I don’t know. Did Harry and his code make a killer out of Dexter? The questions are more interesting to ask, to explore, than definitively answer. They look to who and what we are as human beings. In some cases, or even just in certain moments, we’re fiends. Few are rabid serial killers – thank God – but if we’re really willing to be honest, we all have a darkness we’d rather hide from ourselves and others.

The finale referred back to the William Blake poem The Tyger. “Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” What kind of a God could have made this beast that is at once terrible and magnificent? Is it the same one who designed and gave life to the lamb? These are the questions the Blake poem poses. In the world of this show, Norma is Norman’s deity, he is made in her image and he is at once the gentle lamb and the fearsome tiger that she made of him. It’s heartbreaking, fascinating, and – because the series has found nailed its disturbingly comedic tone – entirely entertaining to behold.

Final thoughts:

--Norman’s death list, his final things "to do" and check off before he shuffled off this mortal coil was so sweetly, darkly, perfectly him.

--I still love the little nods to Psycho, like Norma in the rocking chair and that final shot of Norman.

--“Don’t piss me off and force me to shoot you.” Romero’s a badass and I like it. That’s all. I believe several of us are pulling for him to be Norma’s final ill-fated beau.

--I know I didn’t talk about it much here, but the show’s done a great job of integrating the story of this dysfunctional drug-trade town with Norma and Norman’s story. The exterior elements were clunky at first, but are ultimately there to serve to support, highlight and/or reflect what’s happening with the Bates family.

--With Jodi dead and a “power vacuum” in White Pine Bay, I look forward to seeing Dylan come into his own a bit more next season.

The Verdict

Bates Motel closed its second season with a strong finale that put the focus right back where it belongs: Norman Bates' path to murderous mania and his relationship with his well-intentioned, but ultimately pathologically destructive mother.

What did you guys think?

Roth Cornet is an Entertainment Editor for IGN. You can chat with her on Twitter: @RothCornet, or follow Roth-IGN on IGN.